Last space shuttle launch: Let's make sure space fires up new generation of kids

July 6, 2011|By Mike Thomas, COMMENTARY

It was April 12, 1981, and I was a mere three miles from Columbia.

The perks of my profession include the occasional front-row seat to history, in this case the first launch of the space shuttle.

When Apollo was on the pad, it looked like the finger of God pointed toward heaven.

Columbia looked like a contraption built by Wallace and Gromit. It was this fat, stubby plane glommed on to the huge fuel tank, like a remora latched on to the belly of a white shark. On either side was a Roman candle.

This thing could fly?

Yes, and quite well.

It bolted off Pad 39A and arced out over the ocean. The shuttle era was off and seemingly soaring.

We forget what really transpired that first morning.

The launch rivaled NASA's greatest accomplishments, including sending Alan Shepard into space in 1961 and Neil Armstrong to the moon in 1969.

They all flew in rockets that had been developed in evolutionary steps going back to the V-2. They were flight-tested before astronauts ever strapped themselves in.

The shuttle was something entirely different.

It went up like a rocket, landed like a plane and had three cutting-edge engines fed by a massive external fuel tank. It was protected by a complex coat of thermal tiles, glued on by hand.

This technological marvel was bolted to two solid-fuel boosters from the Stone Age, a mating of the past and the future.

There would be no unmanned launch to ensure all this would work, that the calculations were correct and the potential failure points would hold up under the stress of launch. The boosters had not even been test-fired in a vertical position. The seemingly simple task of releasing the fuel tank in orbit required four flapper valves in the fuel lines to slam shut. The danger that one could accidentally and catastrophically close during ascent kept engineers up at night, almost as much as the tiles.

And to top off this crapshoot, the only escape system were two worthless ejection seats that would have shot the astronauts into the booster flames.

John Young and Bob Crippen were far braver men than America appreciated. There was a reason only two astronauts boarded Columbia that morning.

If only that moment could have been frozen, if NASA could have sent Columbia off to the Smithsonian and moved on to its next grand adventure.

It will be fascinating to see how history deals with the shuttle.

Will it be remembered as a remarkable technological achievement that laid the groundwork for future space exploration? Or will it be remembered for unmet promises, two disasters and the end of American manned spaceflight?

We certainly are at the greatest juncture in NASA's history.

There are few practical reasons to be launching Buck Rogers into space when WALL-E can do more up there and cheaper.

We send Buck to inspire us because Buck is one of us. Look what we can do. Look where we can go.

I suppose we will know the future of manned spaceflight when we know how much awe space still can deliver. Because that really is what we are buying.

And that's what makes deciding what's next so perplexing.

In a time of trillion-dollar deficits, you cannot sell manned spaceflight on its practical merits.

This is not some shortcoming of the current generation. For all the nostalgia of Apollo, we tend to forget how quickly we got bored with going to the moon.

How many people know how often we went? As we prepare for the historic last shuttle flight, who can name the historic last Apollo lunar landing?

The shuttle program actually was a very hard sell in the 1970s.

So imagine how hard it will be selling whatever comes next.

How we approach space has to change. We have to turn to the entrepreneurs, with their plans for trips into low Earth orbit and discount space stations. They offer something the shuttle never could: the possibility of a ticket to ride.

NASA proved space was possible. And for the adventure to continue, we need organic growth. Give more and more people a taste of space and build the desire to go to ever-farther places.

I think the desire is there.

Earlier this year I sat down at our computer and saw our daughter had changed the wallpaper. There was a shuttle on the pad, boosters just kicking in, ready to rip.

Her science class was devising experiments for the space station. She bought a Lego shuttle and quickly assembled the 1,200-odd parts.

I explained how it all worked, how the main engines fired first, followed by the boosters. I explained the difference between liquid engines and solid fuel. I explained what went wrong with Challenger and Columbia, and our uncertain future in space.

I got her an STS-133 cap, and we watched Discovery go up.

She wants to go up as well. Making that possible should be our next mission.